Infrastructural, decisional and organizational aspects to use mode shift to handle disruptions in freight transport: Literature and expert survey

Abstract

Freight transport disruptions in recent years caused production shutdowns in the industry, supply shortages and high economic damage around the world. In practice, contingency strategies from transport operators are often weak and disruption management fails to handle the situation sufficiently. Despite availability of data collection, academic optimization approaches, and multiple initiatives for coordinated multimodal management in case of disruptions, there are multiple infrastructural, decisional and organizational issues, which limit their applicability. We study those factors by a literature analysis, and a survey in which we ask practitioners, authorities and academic experts to discuss specific aspect in structured and unstructured form. We summarize some parameters, which can be influenced by strategic, tactical, operational actions, and those others referring to systemic properties; or disruption characteristics, which can only be hedged against. Hereby, we offer a knowledge base to future projects aiming to optimize multimodal management at strategic tactical and operational scope, to counter disruptions in freight transport networks.